Michael is a Digital Research Director for The Nielsen Company’s Strategic Marketing Science group previously designing online research applications for the primary television research group. He currently works on cross company research projects fusing behavioral, attitudinal and psychographic data. During his four years at Nielsen he has focused much of his time creating a network of digital labs for hands on testing with a national sample focusing on testing television pilots, digital media usability and advertising effectiveness. Michael has pushed for the labs to have cutting edge technology.

He has also consulted on entertainment opinion engine based social network HeyNielsen and helped to create ViewerCast, an online video portal for collecting qualitative research from webcams. In addition to his duties at Nielsen Michael has served as a project advisor for the American Film Institute’s Digital Content Lab. He co-coordinates the Pixelodeon Festival and has previously coordinated the Los Angeles Geek Dinner and the Dataportability Los Angeles Chapter. He has most recently spoken at Mindshare LA, BarCampLA, the IxDA LA Salon and SXSWi.

Michael has a broad software engineering background with work experience in the entertainment industry. His interests lie mainly in the convergence and evolution of media in the digital age. He is also interested in the research of how users consume video/audio content on modern mediums and also how to grow business by leveraging emergent user behavior.